A murky twilight had descended over the hospital as Judith quickened her step on the way to her office. At last she’d be able to sit down and read the letter from London.
Nancy’s exuberance leapt off the page. Stewart had been released from the POW camp and they were making plans for the future. ‘Your brother keeps on about Australia and how much better life would be there for our children. He’s jumping the gun as usual but you know how impetuous he is,’ she wrote. ‘Anyway he’s managed to talk me round, so as soon as I finish up here we’ll be off. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll be neighbours as well as sisters-in-law. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?’
Judith put the letter down and sighed. Apart from her work, she had nothing. She felt a pang of guilt that, instead of being happy for Nancy and her brother, she was envious and upset. She forced herself to keep reading. On the reverse side, the handwriting changed.
‘Hi Sis,’ Stewart had written. ‘Nancy’s given you all the gen so I’ll just add a few words. I couldn’t let you know from the POW camp that our Lanc was shot down, so we all had to bail out. Whew! Wouldn’t want to do that again in a hurry. The Jerries were waiting for us of course, and we ended up in the camp, except for Adam. I don’t know where he ended up but keep your chin up — the moody Pole is bound to turn up.’
He ended with a postscript. ‘You should have been in Trafalgar Square the day Churchill announced the war was over. Lights were blazing, firecrackers were exploding like on New Year’s Eve. Everyone was jammed into the square waving flags, singing Rule Britannia and God Save the King, and kissing and hugging — even total strangers. The only people who weren’t falling over themselves with joy were the Polish airmen. They reckon Poland has lost more territory than Germany. The way they put it, they won the war but lost the peace. You know what an intense lot they are.’
Judith sighed again. She could imagine how bitter Adam would be to know that people were dancing in London and Paris while Warsaw was dark and silent.
What had become of him? The war was over, so how come he hadn’t written to her or contacted Stewart? There was one alternative that her brother hadn’t mentioned, one that she had resolutely ignored, but the letter made her jittery.
The walls of her small office were crowding in on her. She picked up a lantern from her desk and headed for the kitchen. A cup of tea would settle her nerves.
The power was switched off at night, and the kitchen was in darkness. As she held up the lantern, she saw that someone was already in there. A small figure was sitting at the table, her head in her hands.
Judith slipped into the chair beside Elzunia.
‘Are you ill?’ she asked. ‘Do you need anything?’
Elzunia shook her head.
Judith boiled water on the primus stove, filled the teapot, poured two cups and slid one in front of the young nurse.
‘We Aussies have great faith in the restorative power of tea,’ she said. ‘Try it. You’ll feel better.’
Elzunia gave a wan smile. It would take more than tea to boost her spirits and she didn’t like milk in her tea anyway, but Matron was being kind and she didn’t want to offend her.
The steam rose from the tea cups and wisped towards the ceiling as they sipped the tea by the weak light of the lantern, filling the silence with their own thoughts.
Matron was studying her with a kind expression and Elzunia suddenly felt an urge to talk. It would be a relief to talk about the grief that was suffocating her.
‘I’m speak bad English,’ she said.
Judith leaned over. ‘Don’t let that stop you. I’ve become quite good at figuring out what people are trying to say. Fire away.’
She tried to speak but the softness of Matron’s gaze brought tears to her eyes. She finished the milky tea and wondered where to begin.
‘I can tell you’ve had a terrible time,’ Matron murmured. ‘But you’ve still got Gittel and Zbyszek.’
At the mention of the children, Elzunia looked up. Perhaps she’d tell her how she found them. But that would mean talking about the Ghetto. That story was too complicated and too painful. Maybe she could tell her about her nursing experience instead. But if she did, she’d have to talk about the hospitals in the Ghetto and the ones during the Uprising and that would bring her to Andrzej and that was the one subject she couldn’t bear to talk about. The memory of their last night together was still so vivid in her mind that every night before she went to sleep she replayed every detail in her mind, and heard his voice murmuring endearments as he gazed at her. Whenever she closed her eyes, she could still feel his lips and his hands, and could hear him saying, ‘Life is a brief gift.’
Happiness was even briefer, she thought bitterly. Every night before falling asleep, she cried for him, and every morning she kept her eyes closed as long as possible to keep his image in her mind and wished that the dream were real, and the reality was the nightmare.
But that she would never share with Matron, even if she had the words for it. While she wondered where to start, the ticking of the large wall clock punctuated the silence in the dark kitchen. It reminded her of the grandfather clock in Andrzej’s empty apartment that night, and tears were running down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them away.
Judith waited, still and silent. Perhaps the comforting darkness of the kitchen would help the girl elicit memories she found so painful to confront. Focused on the Polish nurse in front of her, she had forgotten about her own grief that had propelled her into the kitchen.
Elzunia brushed a strand of hair from her forehead, blew her nose, and started to speak, haltingly at first, conscious of her inadequate English, but gathering momentum until the words flowed rapidly, regardless of grammar and limited vocabulary.
Judith was transfixed. Although she couldn’t understand everything the girl said, she didn’t ask her to repeat anything. She sensed that it was more important for Elzunia to tell her story without interruptions than for her to understand every single word. At times the sheer force of Elzunia’s intensity communicated the meaning of her words. It was like watching a tragedy enacted in mime. As she listened, Elzunia’s life seemed to embody the chaos of war. Adam had once said that the history of Warsaw had been written in the blood of past generations, and as she listened to Elzunia she saw the story of the world encapsulated in the fate of a single city.
Elzunia cried as she described the doomed Ghetto Uprising and the death of her mother and her friends. She talked about the heroic airman who had saved her life just after the war began, and who reappeared miraculously when she was interned inside the Ghetto. Touched by her tragic experiences, Judith felt tears spring to her eyes.
‘I never forget this man,’ Elzunia concluded. ‘I think about him every day.’
Judith sighed. She knew only too well how unexpectedly war threw people together and how brutally it tore them apart. She looked at Elzunia’s sad face and took her hand.
‘Don’t give up hope,’ she said. ‘Life is full of surprising twists and turns. Perhaps fate will throw you both together again.’
As she walked back to her office, she wished she could believe that fate would produce a miracle for her as well.